Help! My 16 year old is calling from a Mexican Prison

Visions of Terror 

I’m sure all of you at some point have received an email from a diplomat or wealthy foreigner in Nigeria who is asking for a mere $300 to help them move millions of dollars from his homeland.  He graciously offers a percentage of this as a reward for helping him in a letter typed in all caps with gross spelling and grammatical errors. 

Here’s the latest twist in our too connected world and it happened to us just this week. My In-laws live in Southern California. We live in New Jersey.  My In-laws are independent and both over 85, God bless them.

Imagine my mother-in-law’s surprise when the phone rang in the middle of the day and it was a young man who said, “Hello Grandma?  It’s Miles (my son’s name). I’m in Cancun.”

My mother-in-law has had the good fortune of traveling just about everywhere in the world and launched into a chat about her visiting Cancun before the fancy hotels were built and how interesting the ruins of Tulum are and not to miss them.

Then this young man, my supposed son, said, “Listen Grandma, I’ve got a problem. I went to Mexico with a friend of mine who won a free 4 day trip to Cancun and took me with him.”

“How terrific!”

“Well the thing is, his cousin picked us up at the airport but we were stopped by the police as we were leaving and his cousin had a little bag of pot that the police found. I didn’t have any drugs and I only get one phone call and I don’t want to call my parents and upset them. “

“Oh my.”

At this point another person spoke, identifying himself as someone from the consulate office (really, in Cancun?) and assuring my In-Laws that Miles was not in any serious legal trouble, but he needed to post bail so he could leave the country. They were told that they could wire $3400 from their local Western Union, which they knew was in a Rite Aid drug store very close to them. Yes, the callers knew this ahead of time.

“Miles” now got back on the phone with my Mother-in-law and begged her to please not tell his parents.

The Walk of Shame

My mother-in-law assured him that she “crossed her heart, she would never tell them and noted that “Miles” sounded different.

“That’s because he’s been crying M’am” the other voice on the line said. He then instructed her to wire the money to the Western Union office in Mexico City.

“Why Mexico City if you’re in Cancun?” she asked.

The gentleman told her that Miles' lawyer, a Mr. Goldberg, had his main offices in Mexico City but if she had any further questions, to please call him and gave her a phone number. He added that since “Miles” had no drugs he could get out but they shouldn’t say anything about drugs when they send the money to Mexico because it could be put on his record

She then went to my father-in-law and recounted the whole tale. My father-in-law picked up the phone and called the number she had been given.  This gentleman answered the phone and when my father-in-law asked if this was a scam was told,

“No sir, it certainly is not.”

So, my very addled in-laws drove to their bank, took out $4000 in cash (anticipating fees and incidentals their dear grandchild might need) and drove to their local Rite Aid per  instructed.  Unfortunately, there was no parking available so they drove down the block as bit to their local Trader Joes. This lot charged for parking but if you got your ticket stamped at Trader Joes, parking is free. So naturally my mother-in-law went into Trader Joes and bought a bottle of wine to get her ticket stamped. I should mention that they are both Depression babies and watch what they spend very carefully.

They were naturally very upset about the whole and had a conversation about whether they should call us or not. They didn’t want to tell my husband that his son is in trouble--  since my Mother in law swore to “Miles” they would take this to their grave -- but they decided to call and check to see if Miles was out of the country without revealing why. 

While she was in the store, my father-in-law called my husband.

“Ric, Hi! It’s Dad. I’m just calling to make sure you got the package I sent last week.”

“Oh, hi Dad, how are you? Yes we did, thanks. ”

“So how is everybody doing?”

“Everyone is fine. We’re excited about coming to visit you in two weeks. Carol is out grocery shopping and Miles is at his friend Richie’s house.”

“Really? He’s not in Mexico?”

“What are you talking about Dad?”

A gentle villian 

And then the cat was out of the bag.  So if my father in law hadn’t made the call or my husband not happen to be home, some guys in Mexico would be $4000 richer.

When my son heard the story he called his grandparents and thanked them for helping fake Miles out.

“Hey,  if you were willing to send fake Miles $4000. Would you like to send it real Miles?”

Ha! Only if you’re calling from a Mexican prison kid.

COLLEGE PREP!

Bucolic Academia 

So now my son is receiving mail everyday from a variety of colleges and universities. He has apparently gotten on college mailing lists from taking his PSATs as practice in his sophomore year of high school.  Some are simple letters with a personalized code created just for him. This, the letters claim, will provide him with a customized cyber-experience of the school.

                                                                                                     Taking one of these cyber tours reminds me of a trip my husband and I made to the ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico.  Deep in the heart of the Yucatan peninsula are the ruins of an ancient Maya civilization that disappeared without a trace. According to historians, the city was gradually abandoned some time around 1200. 

Look at the steps on the left, amazing eh? 

It is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site, which entered the popular imagination in 1843 with the book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by John Lloyd Stephens. About 20 years later Edward H. Thompson, US consul to the Yucatan, spent over 30 years studying the ruins. The most famous is the Temple of Kukulkan (the Maya name for Quetzalcoatl), a step pyramid built for astronomical purposes. During the vernal and autumnal equinox at about 3pm, sunlight bathes the western front of the pyramid's main stairway. This causes seven isosceles triangles to form imitating the body of a serpent 37 yards long that creep downwards until it joins the huge serpent's head carved in stone at the bottom of the stairway. 

At this 6-mile square site you’ll also find The Great Ball Court, about 500 feet by 220 feet where violent and bloody games were held. At the base of the interior walls are slanted benches with sculpted panels of teams of ball players. In one panel, one of the players has been decapitated and from the wound emits seven streams of blood; six become wriggling serpents and the center becomes a winding plant. 

The secrets of the ruins, we were told, would be explained to us that evening in a fantastic light show created for English speakers. And so, in that evening’s haze in a jungle abuzz with all kinds of critters and fragrant with the scent of tropical flora, we climbed up on the ancient stone steps of the court where losing teams of ancient times were slaughtered for defeat.  

The tinny sound of Mexican music, from speakers on the field, gets us started. Flashing colored light beams imbedded throughout the stadium illuminated the ruins like a 70’s disco in Queens. I anxiously awaited the man in the white sharkskin suit with the Mexican accent to DJ the event and give us dance lessons.  Instead we are treated to a pre-recorded tape of a heavily accented reader providing the highlights of Chichen Itza with the flash of colored lights synced to his reading. 

Unfortunately it was obvious that the reader did not speak English, although that was what he was trying to do. The only word, besides a stray preposition here and there, that we could understand was Chichen Itza (cheat-zen-neat-za). I deduced that he was reading from a transliteration; a recreation of text phonetically created for the reader which does not include the proper inflection or syllabic emphasis or emPHAsis.  My husband and I were laughing at this point because it was completely ridiculous, but for the $40 admission fee. 
                                                                                                                                                                   So now my son and I go on these college cyber-tours in which there are personalized notes and audio/video segments where my son’s name is mechanically inserted much like our tour of Chichen Itza. 


Other colleges send colorful brochures depicting ivy covered buildings and autumn leaves inducing in his mother, a jolt of Love Story, where do I begin --- with the attendant sound track. But to my dear young 16-year-old son who has yet to understand that institutions of higher learning use the same marketing techniques as diet colas, the ones with the colorful brochures look like terrific schools to him. We recently received one of these from someplace like “Schluboygen Eastern College” It had a great looking brochure.


“Oh, mom. That looks like a great school.”

“Yes indeed it does look like great but it’s 3 hours from the closest airport, there are no Chinese restaurants or kosher delis in the neighborhood and no one outside of a 50 miles radius of the campus has ever heard of the place. But you’re right sweetheart, it does LOOK like a great school.”

So how does one select the right college? I remember the process from my own childhood as daunting. I had a well leafed through edition of Barron’s Directory of American Colleges that I spent hours combing through. There was one rule my mother made and I had to obey, the school could be no further than an eight-hour drive from home. Naturally I chose the school that was 8 hours away from home. As far as I was concerned, the less scrutiny my mother had over my collegiate activities, the better and the closer I came to breaking her one rule, well that was a good thing too.

I know people who chose a college because they were chasing a love, guys who selected a school because of their basketball or football teams and others who chose a college because one of their parents had attended, even if they had completely different interests. In retrospect, my 8-hour reason certainly seems just as immature and stupid as any of these so I understand my son’s selection by brochure.

Faced with the prospect of paying over $50,000 a year for my child’s undergraduate education is reason enough for us to make a thoughtful and informed decision.  Money may not or never grow on trees but it will take killing a forest’s worth of paper for his college education. I hope to use those resources wisely.